Conway Goes "Dry" (1888 )
by Frank E. Robins

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from an article printed in the Log Cabin Democrat on May 25, 1931. The author was the newspaper publisher. Frank E. Robins (1880- 1949). Some additional information and the footnotes have been added for this edition of Facts and Fiddlings. 

Five licensed saloons operated in a village of 1,000 people; drunken men reeling and fighting in the streets; gambling in the rear of the barrooms. Politics of the town and county under the complete domination of the liquor interests. A few brave souls who at times lifted their voices in protest, but the majority believing that to close the saloons would kill the town. Good men, even church 
members, holding the sale of liquor no sin....

It was the spring of 1888. Brother Tabor(1) had been here only four or five months, but already his preliminary campaign had girded his little but 
growing battalion for the real conflict. The time had come to fling the gauntlet into the face of the rum demon and to sound the trumpets of battle. And war it was - bitter fighting, in which no quarter was asked or given - fighting in which before the victory was achieved more than one citizen was slain.

Biennially the electors voted for or against license and Faulkner county was wet by a heavy majority. But there was a statute known as the three - mile law, under which the sale of liquor could be prohibited by order of the county court on petition of a majority of the adult inhabitants living within a radius of three miles of a given schoolhouse. With the election machinery in control of the liquor interests there was no hope of prohibition success at the polls, and Brother Tabor and his counsellors decided upon the petition as the weapon of attack. The little green four-room schoolhouse adjoining the church on Locust avenue was adopted as the center of the proposed dry circle around Conway. 

Adults include women and here was the sole right given by the laws of the day for women to express themselves in their government.(2) Women not only signed the petitions but circulated them. The sheets of many of the documents were stained with tears that fell from the eyes of wives of drunken husbands, as they tremblingly wrote their names. Leading the campaign with the zeal of a crusader, Brother Tabor inspired his little band with something of his own superhuman courage and determination. 

But the liquor men were not idle. As the reports came to them of increasing number of signatures going on the petitions, they became alarmed and sought by all the influences they could summon and by intimidation to prevent people from signing and to cause them to remove their names if they had already signed.

At last, however, the dry forces counted noses, found they had a majority, and filed their petition in county court. Here able lawyers on both sides challenged and defended the petitions, name by name, but the court decided in favor of the remonstrants.(3) An appeal to circuit court was granted the prohibitionists. On August 8, 1888, after another legal battle, Circuit Judge Joseph W. Martin wrote his decision in the case of R. T. Blackwell et al, ex parte, and held that the petitioners constituted a majority of the adults in the area affected. He directed the county court to make an order prohibiting for a period of two years the sale of intoxicating liquor within three miles of the public schoolhouse in block 25 of the town of Conway -"saving the rights of persons under unexpired licenses." Since saloon licenses were issued for the calendar year , that phrase meant that after December 31, 1888, liquor could not be legally sold in Conway. The courtroom was crowded during the trial and the bulge of revolvers could be seen under many of the men's coats. The victors were afraid to cheer lest a bloody affray be started. There were further contests in the courts and at the polls and finally a special prohibition statute for Conway, but time will not permit a description of them. The saloons closed their doors at midnight on the last day of 1888 and never again were they reopened. 


Footnotes:
(l) Rev. Edward A. Tabor, a Methodist minister who had come to the pulpit of the Conway Methodist Church in Decernber 1887. "Always, like the prophet crying out in the wildemess, he preached temperance, prohibition." Tabor married Mary Louise Randell of Conway in 1888. In 1890 he and Capt. W. W. Martin led the successful effort of Conway to be the new site of Hendrix College, then located in Altus. Robert w. Meriwether, Hendrix College: The Move from Altus to Conway (Little Rock: Rose Publishing Co. (1976), pp. 36-44. See also James Basil Julian, "Prohibition Comes to Conway," Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings (Spring 1968), pp. 7-13

(2) Arkansas women did not get the right to vote for another thirty years - until the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1920. 

(3) The "remonstrants" were the ..wets" who challenged the petitions. E. A. Merriman was the Faulkner county judge at this time.


Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings
Spring and Summer, 1997
Conway Goes "Dry" (1888)
pp 15-16.